In A Darkened Room, She Waits For Him
by TheSatinDiamond
Summary: Many years later, Christian helps the daughter Satine bore him to prepare to perform in a play. Through flashbacks and the present, we learn of love, and how it overcame all obstacles - even death.
1. Random Glimpses

"Desmergers...Desmergers....where on earth have I heard that name before, Warner?" He asked. He read the sign again.  
  
'See Sarah Desmergers perform as Elizabeth Montgomery in THE MONTGOMERY WIVES'  
  
"Errrr....that was the whore's name, Your Grace." Warner answered, knowing what would come next and dreading it.  
  
"Well, we shall have to have a look-see, hmm? She could very well have changed her name."  
  
"I suppose she could have at that, Your Grace."  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&  
  
"Are you ready, darling?" Christian asked his daughter. He looked at her, in her pale blue Georgian frock, and she reminded him so much of her mother. Her light blonde hair fell to her shoulders in curls, and her light blue eyes stood out from her face like crystals.   
  
"Yes, papa." As she stepped off the stool and kissed his cheek, he wondered how a seventeen-year-old girl could have so much of the grace and wisdom that her mother, savvy and cynical, had always had.  
  
"Well, Christian, is everything ready?" Christian turned as his wife came in the room.   
  
He grinned at her, loving her more now than ever. "Yes, it's perfect."  
  
"I know you want everything perfect for her first performance, love, but remember- you can't protect her." She said quietly, into his ear, as Sarah left to have Violet do her makeup. "She'll have to make her own mistakes"  
  
"I know she will." He murmured as she walked off to help. He remembered someone else who'd had to make her own mistakes.  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&  
  
"I'm leaving, Christian, and that's that." She'd said to him. "The Duke can make me a star."  
  
"But you don't love him!" He'd shouted. "How can you live a life without love again?"  
  
"Because I have to. This dream is the one thing that's kept me going, and I /b abandon it. Goodbye, Christian."  
  
"I can keep you going." He replied, just a moment too late. The door slammed. He wept, believing he'd never see her face again.  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&  
  
"And I wonder . . . are you thinking of me, cause I'm thinkin' of you? And I wonder . . . are you ever comin' back in my life?" He sang quietly to himself. Two years had passed, and so much had happened, and yet he still didn't know how to let her go. He picked up the gun, and opened the chamber. One shiny, pale yellow bullet was in the chamber. Just one. Enough to kill himself . . . or the boy. He tucked the chamber back in, and spun it randomly. He put it to his head, and cocked the hammer. The trigger pull resulted only in a click. He tucked the gun into his pants, and left the house. He would find the boy.  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&  
  
She grinned, but it wasn't a happy grin. The stage was big and bare and dark, the single spotlight glaring in her eyes as she sang her song. "You were the one I loved, the one thing that I dreamed to hold on to....." The doors burst open, and there he was. She loved him again the moment that she saw him. He went over to the director of the play. She stepped down from the stage. "Yes, Satine, come here, meet our writer. Christian James, our star, Satine Desmergers." Tom said, motioning toward them each in turn.  
  
"Hello, Christian." She said warmly.  
  
"Satine." He nodded, coldy, cruelly.  
  
"You wrote 'The Montgomery Wives'?" She asked, now understanding why she'd taken the part in such a small performance peice. It really was beneath her stature as an actress and singer, but somehow it had attracted her and held her, and she'd taken the role as Elizabeth.  
  
"Yes." He answered shortly, then turned to the door. "Tom, I'll get that scene done by tomorrow." He said over his shoulder, and left.  
  
"You've met him." Tom said, more a statement than a question.  
  
"Yes, I have. We knew each other in Paris." She said, quietly.  
  
"He seemed . . . he didn't seem quite like himself." He answered, seemingly offering her the choice to give more information.  
  
"He hates me, Tom. He hates me and he has every reason to."  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&  
  
The rapping at his apartment door was soft and tentative. He knew without answering who was at his door. It was her. It was the whore. He laughed at her timing. He looked at the revolver. Two months ago, when he had vowed to find the boy, the writer who had stolen his love, he had underestimated the boy's talents. He'd written a book. A book of lies - about a writer and a courtesan, and that part might have been true, but the courtesan had loved the writer, and Satine hadn't loved the boy. She had loved him, the duke. He who was offering a lifetime of warmth and security, a son who might be king if the right people died - and they would - and a house on the hill with horses and dogs. But the boy - the boy had enchanted her, bewitched her, hypnotized her with his good looks and his stunning words. He had made her believe she loved him. But the courtesan had died. Satine hadn't died. She'd left. First she left the boy, then she left the duke. Not he was alone, but not for long. He hadn't been able to get near the boy - the writer was engaged to a dutchess. A dutchess! He laughed as he reached for the revolver. Just one bullet. This time he spun the chamber purposfully, delibrately. He turned the gun, and pulled the trigger, and one thought struck him as the bullet went home - what if it wasn't her? 


	2. Love's Return

Christian sat in the front row of the audience as the house lights went dim and the spotlights came on. This was Sarah's big night - her very first performance. How apropos that it should happen in the very role in the very play that her mother had made famous. He looked over to his beautiful, auborn-haired wife, and grinned. He thought how very different she was from the woman he'd known in Monmartre - softer, smarter, not as strong but just as vivacious - and laughed at how time can change a man. He thought back to the first time he'd watched the play with Satine in the role.  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&  
  
"Satine, could you put a little more into it?" Tom yelled, growing exasperated.   
  
"Sorry, Tom." Satine answered. She looked to Christian, whose demeanor hadn't warmed any in the days since he had first arrived on the scene of The Montgomery Wives.  
  
"Satine, sorry isn't going to cut it. Tomorrow is opening night, and you're giving me a dry, emotionless reading. This isn't like you. Take a break. I want everyone back here at six, ready to go. For real." He looked right at her as he finished the statement.  
  
She walked out of the theatre, wondering what she could possibly do with two hours to herself. She soon found herself wandering the streets of London, and of course wound up in front of the apartment building where Christian was staying. She walked up the stairs slowly. Tom had mentioned in passing where Christian was living while he was in the city, and somehow it stuck in her mind. She looked at his door now, standing, not knocking, just standing. She suddenly remembered the last time she had knocked at a door, and had a powerful urge to turn tail and run.   
  
She knocked.  
  
"'Lo?" Christian said as he swung the door open. He was clad only in pants, his shirt and shoes forgotten the moment they left his skin. She looked at him for a moment. His stomach was still tight, his body toned and scattered with the barest bit of peach-like hair. She met his eyes. "Oh, you. Come in then, this was bound eventually."  
  
As she followed him into the room, she was struck by the cleanliness of the room. It didn't fit - here was the room of a man who had gotten over pain, but he seemed so cold, so rude, so bitter. She sighed. "Hello, Christian." It was too breathy, to much of a come-on, but in times like this, she still reverted to her old social skills. Thus far, they hadn't failed her.  
  
"Why're you here?"  
  
No give. No break in his voice, just a solid ice wall. "I- I don't know." She wanted to cry. She felt like a fool, a stupid, greedy fool who had pushed away the only thing she'd ever had.  
  
"This is the part where you're supposed to apologize, you know."  
  
This, too, was said coldly, so coldly that Satine almost missed the laughter that flowed in it.  
  
"Really. Is that in the script?" She teased.  
  
"Not yet."  
  
"Then I apologize. I apologize. I'm so sorry that I left and if I could take it back, I would. I would have the minute I left but I had to save face, and it's been killing me. For three years, it's been eating me away inside." She began to sob.  
  
"Satine, I know you had to do what you did." He stepped toward her, taking her into a warm, friendly embrace. "Don't regret it. That's the way life has to be lived - you do what you have to do."  
  
She grinned up at him, and he could feel her heart beating against his chest. "I love you, Christian." She said.  
  
Looking into her eyes, Christian was so overcome with love that he forgot how much she had hurt him, forgot how much he loved his fiance, forgot who and where he was. He leaned down and kissed her. 


	3. Rembrances

(*AUTHOR'S NOTE* Just to avoid confusion, only the very first section in each chapter is the present. All the rest are flashbacks in Christian's mind. Also, these chapters may be a bit fewer and farther between for a while. I have a lot of commitments right now, but I will definately work on it when I can.)  
  
The curtain went up, and there was Sarah. He gasped, looking at his beautiful daughter, the very picture of her mother. He sighed, and looked over at his wife. She turned to him and grinned. "Christian, it'll be aright. She'll do the part justice."  
  
"She's like her mother." He told her, and smiled back. They turned back to the play and watched the story unfold.  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*  
  
The kiss ended abruply as Christian pulled away from her lips and backed away.  
  
"Christian - "  
  
"No, Satine, no. You don't understand. When you left, I . . . I wanted to die. But then I moved on, and I grew up and now I'm engaged, and I'm just not the same man- same boy, really- that you knew. I don't love you anymore. I love her. I love Diana, she is my fiancee."  
  
"No. You... you can't." Satine said, crushed. She had been longing for this moment for too long, willing it this way, imagining how it might go and how she would win him over as he had won her over atop the Elephant in the gardens of the Moulin Rouge. This moment had become her obsession, and now he was ruining it.  
  
"But I do, Satine." He said, turning away from her, toward the window that looked out upon the starless London sky.  
  
"I love you, Christian." She turned, and was out the door before he could even reply.  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*  
  
"That was marvelous, Satine. Very powerful." Satine looked out at the nearly empty theatre, the only seats filled containing crew members and other cast who weren't in the final scene. "After that, it will be curtain call, you all know your places for that, and then we're done." Tom was calling out, but Satine barely heard him. She was looking at the seat that Christian had occupied before their break. It was empty.  
  
"I want everyone here at five tomorrow night for last minute preparations. Goodnight."  
  
She left the theatre, alone again, more alone than ever before. All her life seemed wasted. She had lost the only love she'd ever felt to become an actress, and now she was giving the reputation she had fought so hard to keep for a love that had burnt out two and a half years ago. She was as lost and naive as he had been back then. She walked into a pub on the corner, and sat at the bar. She drank a gin and tonic neat, and remembered him. Just remembered.  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*  
  
"No, no, no! That's not the line, Satine." Christian had called to her. This had been on the set of Spectacular Spectacular. She'd intentionally flubbed a line in order to create an excuse to meet with Christian.  
  
"Christian, I need to speak with you. The line you have just doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps we could discuss it later? You promised to help me learn my lines anyway."   
  
He had grinned. "Of course, Miss Satine. Anything you ask."  
  
"But darling, we were supposed to attend a dinner this evening, and I just can't-"  
  
"Dear Duke, it simply isn't possible for me to attend a dinner in good conscience while there is work to be done." She'd said, barely able to conceil her grin.  
  
"As you wish, my dear."  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*  
  
"Satine, no. It has to work out for them. The courtesan has to choose the penniless sitar player in the end." She had broached the subject once, just once, that perhaps the play - and their love- should end differently.  
  
"But I just think that if the courtesan married the sitar player, she might spend her entire life wondering what she might have been." She's replied, speaking cryptically so that the Duke, sitting, bored, at her left while she argued with Christian, who was seated diagonally to her right.  
  
"Ah, but that's the catch. If she throws away her love for the sitar player, she'll spend her entire life wondering what they might have been." He'd grinned, thinking that he had won.  
  
"But what if she's wrong? What if she leaves the Maharaja behind, marries the sitar player, and then realizes it wasn't really love at all, but some twisted kind of lustfull enfatuation?" She had replied.  
  
"But what if she isn't, and she chooses the Maharaja? She might not become as all-powerful as she thinks."  
  
"And why wouldn't she?" Satine had demanded, taking Christian's comments personally.  
  
"Well, sometimes, things don't go quite the way they're expected too." Christians reply had been quick. "The Mahraja might break his word once he has what he wants from her, for example. Or maybe her talents aren't enough. I mean, she's certainly lovely, and she's obviously good at what she does, but sometimes you just strike out."  
  
"I still think you should consider the concept that she might-"  
  
"She isn't going to choose the D- the Maharaja. She loves the sitar player. That's all that matters." His voice as he said this was calm, deathly quiet, and he grinned.  
  
"Yes, I suppose it is all that matters." She had answered, meeting his grin with one of her own.  
  
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*  
  
In the bar, Satine sighed. She looked around the room, then looked at the empty glass in her hand, and the three on the bar in front of her. She belched, and nearly fell off her stool. It had been a long time since she'd had four doubles in a single night. She giggled. Then the music came on. The band- a trumpet, a clarinet, and two violinists with a vocalist- had been playing quietly, but she recognised the song even across the loud, smoky room.  
  
"Never knew, I could feel, like this . . ." She sang along quietly, letting the warm tears spill over her cheeks. In her grief, she didn't notice the man who walked into the bar behind her until he spoke.  
  
"Satine?" 


End file.
